Wednesday 9/23: Baby Keem—"hooligan"
Today, we share our thoughts on a new song by the L.A. rapper Baby Keem.
Welcome to Endless Scroll, the brainchild of Eli Enis (he/him) and Eric Bennett (they/them). Since Feb. 2019, we’ve been a weekly podcast about music, the internet, and where those two things intersect. Now we’re, also a M-F newsletter about songs. Our format is simple: a link to a song and a short take from each of us about what we think of it. Each day of the week has a corresponding genre: Monday is indie, Tuesday is punk, Wednesday is hip-hop, Thursday is pop, and Friday is misc.
Today, we share our thoughts on a new song by the L.A. rapper Baby Keem. We’re joined by none other than Endless Scroll hip-hop correspondent Michael Brooks.
Baby Keem—"hooligan"
Michael Brooks:
Back in August, Spotify launched the Day 1 Club as a way to celebrate the fifth anniversary of their RapCaviar playlist, and I was pretty stoked to check it out even though I was sort of late to the game with Spotify. I think I created my Spotify account towards the end of 2016, which was a pretty big deal for me considering that I was still using an LG enV2 as my phone until it broke down in November of 2015. Do you know what iPhone was out in 2015? The iPhone 6S. People were out here using the iPhone 6S and I was still tweeting via SMS on a QWERTY keyboard. And to be perfectly honest with you those were the best days of my life. But that’s neither here nor there.
The biggest surprise to me whenever I checked out the Day 1 Club feature was that I’ve been listening to Baby Keem for a long time. According to Spotify I’m in the first 2% of people to start streaming his music on the app, so if I ever get approached on the street with accusations that I wasn’t shooting with him in the gym, I can pull out the receipts and lay those claims to rest. I think it was strange to see that I’ve been listening to Baby Keem for so long because he’s not a rapper that I think about all that much. I remember checking his music out for the first time because I saw his name on the production credits for Jay Rock’s 2018 album Redemption. I thought it was kind of weird that a 17-year-old I had never heard of before had a couple beat placements on a TDE record, but it turns out that Baby Keem is cousins with Kendrick Lamar. At least that’s what I’ve read online, Eli can fact check that for me because he seems like the kind of guy that thinks trivia is cool [Eli here, it checks out].
With connections to the music industry like that, Baby Keem is inevitable, so thankfully his music is actually pretty good. “Hooligan,” which he dropped a video for last week, is one of his most sinister and mysterious sounding tracks to date. Featuring an arpeggiated piano melody that sounds like it came from a ‘70s horror flick, Keem’s elastic delivery is what you really ought to be paying attention to, giving the track a little extra bounce to it. His ability to stop, pause, and repeat phrases at the drop of a dime is dizzying; trying to keep up with his flow is like watching the world’s most intense game of Red Light, Green Light.
But even when he’s rapping at his most technically proficient it sounds smooth and natural, never like he’s trying to showboat. Whether or not Keem is an industry plant is still up for debate (Eli we really need you to look more into this), but what’s not up for debate is how catchy his music is. Besides, what’s wrong with being an industry plant? Plot twist: my dad’s Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, and I just tricked you all into checking out the RapCaviar playlist. I bet you didn’t see that one coming.
Eli Enis:
First off: I need to know how Michael’s dad was CEO of one of the most cutting-edge entertainment companies in the world but he couldn’t afford to upgrade his kid to at least an iPhone 4. But alas, this newsletter isn’t for daddy issues and parental limitations on technology (check out Daniel Ek’s Substack for that), so I’m gonna focus on the Baby Keem song we have on our hands. Baby Keem is one of those names I’ve seen around a lot and I’ve definitely listened to passively, but I’ve never really connected with any of his tracks. That song “ORANGE SODA” of his that’s got like 132m Spotify plays is pretty good, but when he got announced as one of the XXL Freshman for this year, he was one of the few MC’s on the list that really felt like a freshman.
NLE Choppa, Polo G, Jack Harlow, Lil Tjay—these are all people who have distinct identities in my mind, but Baby Keem still feels like he’s figuring his identity out, which is by no means a bad thing. Yes, he’s cousins with Kendrick and has already been indoctrinated in the TDE universe, and I think that’s a really great spot for his flow and his lyrics. I think he does sound a little bit like his cousin at points, especially on the B-side of “hooligan”, the “sons and critics freestyle”—and specifically the DAMN. and beyond era Kendrick. That really tight, stop-start flow that Kendrick used on songs like “Humble” and “King’s Dead”.
However, at this point Kendrick Lamar and some of those other TDE legends like Schoolboy Q sound out of sync with hip-hop in the TikTok era, and I think “hooligan” is Baby Keem effectively bringing those sensibilities to the current moment. You can tell that Baby Keem is a bit of a rapper’s rapper with a precise delivery; he sounds at once loose and measured, limber yet wild-eyed like an athlete before a big game. He’s got a sense of humor, too: “I drip in all black like an emo bitch.” All that said, I think the most interesting and perhaps even the most skillful, in a pop sense, part of “hooligan” is its “fah-fah-fah, fah-fah-fah” hook. It’s the sort of sugary, nonchalant babble that does great on TikTok and recalls the “ee-oo” at the beginning of Roddy Ricch’s “The Box”. As the success of people like Lil Baby and DaBaby signals that classical rapping is having its moment in the mainstream again, I think Baby Keem’s convergence of blank-faced technicality and du jour pop playfulness makes him a formidable force.